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Directions and preparing for Test #1
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-Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca

As mentioned on the course home page, your first test is in your lab
period on Tuesday, September 28, 2004.

Bring a soft pencil (and a good eraser) for Part I of the test.

The test is in two parts.

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Part I - (mostly) closed book multiple choice
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The first part of the test is multiple choice questions, filled out
on mark-sense sheets using a soft pencil.  It is closed book, except
that you may have with you a "crib sheet".  A crib sheet is one single
piece of paper (metric A4 or standard Letter size) filled with anything
you want to put there.  You may use both sides.  You may hand write
the paper or you may machine print it with tiny letters - you choose.
You can put text or pictures or programs or anything you want there.
You can copy the entire course textbook onto the page, if you can read it.
Magnifying glasses are permitted.

You must prepare your own crib sheet.  You will submit your crib sheet
at the end of the test.  People who have copied crib sheets from other
people will have their marks divided by two.  Prepare your own crib sheet.

Put your name on your crib sheet.

Many sample test questions have been posted to the Notes page:

    Practice Test #1 Questions
       practiceTest1.txt  (text format)
       practiceTest1.ps   (Postscript format)
       practiceTest1.pdf  (Portable Document Format)

    All the files contain the same material in a different randomized order.
    Each file has its own answer key at the end.

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Part II - open book online work
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After you have finished Part I, you may start Part II of the test.
Part II is online and fully open book, open note, open computer.  You will
be required to perform some online lab work using the VIM editor and
using Unix commands from the list of commands you know (see the Notes).

See this Notes file for examples of the things you might be asked to do:

  practiceCommands_1.txt     Practice Unix/Linux Questions #1


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Other Notes (September 28)
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Some things to know about Test #1 -

1) The test was formatted using last year's final exam macros, which
   means the percentage numbers printed on the sheet in the
   multiple-choice section (Part I) are wrong.  This test as a whole is
   worth 10%.  The 42 multiple-choice questions [closed book] are worth
   6 of the 10%.  The 11 shell command steps [open book] are worth 4 of
   the 10%.

2) For the shell command section (Part II), you will be using vim to
   prepare a list of the commands you use to solve the questions posed
   in each of the steps.  The format of the file you will prepare is
   similar to this:

   # Step 1
   date
   echo "hi there"

   # Step 2
   who
   ls -l /etc/passwd

   Each step must be preceded by a comment line that starts with '#'
   that contains the step number.  After that line come the shell
   commands that you use to answer the questions for that step.

   You must perform the shell commands requested by each step, and you
   must also record the (successful) commands you use in a file in the
   above format.  You will use datsubmit to submit this file at the end
   of the test.

   I will collect the results of your shell commands from your home
   directories at the end of the test.  Do not delete or modify any
   files until an hour after the test ends, so that I can collect all
   your files safely.

3) You may find it useful to log in multiple times to the Course Linux
   Server during the test, so that you can be doing several things at
   the same time in different windows.